https://sig2perspectives.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1758186Functional Neuroimaging of “Executive” Dysfunction in Traumatic Brain Injury: A Cognitive Neuroscience PerspectiveMore than 2 million people in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) annually. Of the survivors, over 80,000 will experience permanent disabilities (National Institutes of Health, 1998; Thurman, Alverson, Dunn, Guerrero, & Sniezek, 1999), often resulting from cognitive impairments. TBI-related cognitive deficits can have a profound impact ...2003-12-01T00:00:00ArticleMichael J. Larson

More than 2 million people in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) annually. Of the survivors, over 80,000 will experience permanent disabilities (National Institutes of Health, 1998; Thurman, Alverson, Dunn, Guerrero, & Sniezek, 1999), often resulting from cognitive impairments. TBI-related cognitive deficits can have a profound impact on a survivor’s ability to return to his or her previous level of functioning and often significantly reduce quality of life for survivors and caregivers (Arciniegas, Held, & Wagner, 2002). The development of effective rehabilitation and compensatory strategies requires accurate cognitive assessment and a detailed understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying cognitive impairments. In the present paper, we briefly review findings from functional neuroimaging studies of executive functioning in individuals with TBI, including studies using both hemodynamic response-based measures of brain activity (positron emission tomography, PET; functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) and electrophysiologically based measures (scalp-recorded brain event-related potentials, ERPs) to characterize the nature of this impairment. We also present preliminary findings from two recently completed studies to illustrate the application of these methods to the study of TBI-related cognitive dysfunction.